Live from Music Row Monday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed U.S. (R-TN-07), Rep. Mark Green, to the newsmaker line to discuss Biden’s no show at annual Army-Navy football game, the destruction of tornadoes in Tennessee, and the Democrats quest for authoritarianism.
Leahy: On the newsmaker line, our good friend, Representative Mark Green, a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, served in combat in Iraq and decorated. H also left the army, was a major, I think when he left the army. Welcome to The Tennessee Star Report, Congressman Green.
Green: Hey! Thanks for having me on.
Leahy: Did you watch the Army-Navy game? Who won that game? Oh, that would be Navy. 17 to 13. What was your reaction to that?
Green: (Chuckles) Well, I think the Navy wanted it more. I think the Army went in a little too confident. They had a great season so far. And, of course, we had a few of our better players on injured reserve, but we just didn’t look like we wanted it. And Navy did.
Leahy: What’s it like being a cadet going to the Army-Navy game?
Green: Oh, it’s pretty amazing. Of course, you’ve got always in the background the life of being a cadet. So it’s sort of like you’re out of prison for four hours or five hours for the weekend. And you’re there in Philadelphia most of the time. In all my years at West Point, except for one when we went out to Anaheim. But, yeah, it’s a great game. A great American tradition.
Leahy: Well, I noticed that the current President, Joe Biden, broke with tradition. Former President Donald Trump went to every single Army-Navy game.
Joe Biden didn’t go. I don’t know. I mean, if I were a cadet or a Midshipman, I don’t think I would be very pleased with that. What’s your reaction to Biden’s not showing up?
Green: I really don’t know. I didn’t give it much thought. The only thing when I think about Joe Biden, I think about the destruction to the country. I don’t think about whether he goes to the football game or not. But it is a little bit of a slap in the face I suppose.
Leahy: One of your colleagues, Lee Zeldin from New York. I’ll just throw this out there. Said the reason the White House staff didn’t want him to go there was because they were afraid the crowd would break out in chance of Let’s Go Brandon!
Green: I don’t doubt that there’s a reason why Kamala Harris doesn’t go to the border, even though she’s the border czar. It’s because the cameras go there and they see things they don’t want to see. So in that case, they would hear things they don’t want to hear.
Leahy: Well, parts of your district had very, very I think it was parts of your district were affected by these tornadoes late Friday night, early Saturday morning. What’s the status? What can you report on that?
Green: Well, obviously, just like the floods in Waverley, just like the floods in Hardin County. I mean, Tennessee and rally to each other. People are all over the district helping those who’ve lost property damage and things like that.
Our district fared better than David Kustoff’s district. The tornado actually started out there in West Tennessee. The big tornado that ripped through Kentucky. And of course, the images from Kentucky are just grieving everyone.
Leahy: I want to follow up on another question. I call this Build Back Broker bill. What’s the status of that bill?
Green: So it looks like the Senate is going to hold it. I mean, so far Manchin has done what he said he was going to do and pushed back. Now, both he and Kyrsten Sinema have said that they aren’t supportive of the bill.
And I think after Virginia, both of those folks saw what happened there and realized this kind of woke craziness that’s going on and I would even say Marxist stuff that’s going on in the far-left Democrat Party are not going to be a part of it. And they know it’s not very good for their political lifespan.
Leahy: Crom Carmichael has a question for you, Mark.
Carmichael: Congressman, on the Build Back Better, his bill. Whatever you want to call it. I’m of the opinion that there are at least a half dozen other Senate Democrats that do not want it to come to the floor for a vote, but they don’t want to be vocal against the bill.
They just want it to die and never come to the floor. And among those would be Mark Kelly, Hassan in New Hampshire and the Senator from Nevada, and then also Tester who’s not up for reelection this time but still does not want to have to vote for that bill. Your comment on that?
Green: Well, I can only share what our senators say with me or say to me. And Marsha has made it very clear that there are five to six over there who definitely will not vote for it if it comes to the floor. And so that kind of confirms your suspicion. But yeah, Marsha has said that there’s more than just Manchin incentive.
Leahy: Congressman Green, I have a question on a breaking story to see if you can give us some insight into this. So the January 6th ‘select committee’ that is looking into the breach of the Capitol on January 6, 2021, subpoenaed Steve Bannon. He said he wouldn’t comply with the subpoena due to executive privilege.
The committee wanted to hold him in contempt. The House voted yes to hold him in contempt. And now the Justice Department is prosecuting him. Just yesterday, apparently, or Friday, the committee then also said they want to hold former Chief of Staff Mark Meadows, also a former congressman in contempt.
That’s going to the House for a vote. Do you think that House vote will have the same result as the recommendation to hold Bannon in contempt, or will it be different because he’s Mark Meadows?
Green: It’s very interesting. Mark Meadows was a member of the Freedom Caucus. He was a very conservative member of Congress, and Democrats liked him. It’s very interesting. He would always get extra courtesy when debated in committee beyond what others would get.
And I think it’s because he just was a very nice person and worked very diligently for compromise at times. And so I think there’ll be some Democrats who do not vote to hold Meadows in contempt. Now we’ll see. Pelosi is the master at whipping her caucus. So we’ll see.
Carmichael: Is that literally or figuratively?
Leahy: She’s got the whip. Boom! (Laughter)
Carmichael: I just want to be clear, because it could be either. (Laughs)
Leahy: When will that vote come up?
Green: That’s a hard question. So we may be voting Tuesday or Wednesday this week and that’s on passage of some budget-related stuff. But if we go for that, they’ll put the Meadows thing on. If not, it’s going to be the first week of January.
Leahy: You had a piece at the Washington Examiner. I think recently talking about the triangle of tyranny. I thought that was quite profound.
In the minute and a half we have, describe the triangle of tyranny and what reaction people have had to that piece that you wrote.
Green: Basically, if you look at the Os Guinness Freedom Triangle or Golden Triangle, where freedom is the objective to get there, you have to have a virtuous society. To get a virtuous society. You have to have a fixed moral right.
And to get faith or a fixed moral right, you have to have freedom. So there’s this circular. And I wondered, what is it that’s driving the Democrats? Not all Democrats, but at least these Marxists.
And instead of freedom, they want authoritarianism with themselves in control, dictating to everybody else. And in order to get everyone to want authoritarianism, you have to have chaos.
So when there are riots in the streets, people will even accept martial law when there are riots. So to get authoritarianism, you have to have chaos. And to get chaos, you have to have moral relativity. And you can see moral relativity and the best example, of course, is their views on abortion.
And of course, once you get moral relativity and morality is relative, the authoritarians can tell you what’s right and wrong. They can tell you what they want to say and what you can say. So that is my vision of what the leftists and the Democrats want.
Leahy: What’s been the reaction to people who have thought about that?
Green: People really go, wow, that’s pretty deep thinking.
Leahy: Something profound from a member of Congress. It rarely happens. Congratulations on getting something profound out there.
Green: I’m a reader. I love to read and to think about these kinds of things.
Leahy: We’re out of time. But thanks so much. We got so much more to talk about. Come in studio sometime, if you would please. We’ll have a full hour. All right?
Green: I will. Absolutely.
Leahy: Congressman Mark Green, always interesting to talk to you.
Carmichael: It sure is. It sure is.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed U.S. Rep. Mark Green, a Republican congressman representing Tennessee’s Seventh Congressional District to discuss his visit at the border, AOC’s word recognition prolems, and the HR1 bill.
Leahy: We are joined on our newsmaker line by our good friend, Congressman Mark Green. Congressman Green, welcome to The Tennessee Star Report.
Green: Well, thanks for having me on. I really appreciate it.
Leahy: How are you holding up there? (Laughter) That’s my first question. How are you holding up in Nancy Pelosi’s crazy out of control, House of Representatives?
Green: Well, I haven’t snapped yet, but it’s enough to drive a man to it. I mean, some of the stuff that’s just being proposed is absolutely absurd. And you look at stuff that Fox News blew up from an interview from the border with me where I talked about AOC. I don’t know if you saw any of that.
Leahy: I saw that. So tell our listening audience about that.
Green: Well, she had heard people talking about the surge at the border and thought that we were calling the children coming across the border insurgents because we used the word surge. No, surge means a high volume over a short period of time.
Leahy: Did you spell it out? Congresswoman Cortez, surge means a high volume.
Green: It has nothing to do with people attempting to overgrow government. They like to throw that word around, by the way, inappropriately many times. But anyway, I digress.
Carmichael: Question for you, Mark, this is Crom. HR1 passed the House. I know you all couldn’t do anything to stop that from happening. It’s now in the Senate. What’s your prediction on what’s going to happen there?
Green: Yeah. It comes down to Joe Manchin. I’m hopeful that he bears the pressure. It’s going to be incredible on him from his own party. But he has now said that there are parts of the bill that he could support. So the Biden administration and Chuck Schumer said we’ll split the bill up. Now, that means it has to come back over to the House unless they trim down and amend out the parts that he doesn’t like and then attempt to pass that.
Carmichael: But don’t they have to break the filibuster to pass anything that’s not budget-related?
Green: They do. But if he gets a bill that he’s willing to support, then that will support doing it under reconciliation or some other mechanism.
Carmichael: How? Then the filibuster must not matter on anything if an election bill can be passed under reconciliation, then nothing can’t be passed under reconciliation.
Green: That’s basically what Schumer is saying. He said that he’s going to do this reconciliation process many more times than has been done in the past. That’s exactly what he has said.
Carmichael: Okay, well, then I guess Mitch McConnell’s only response is to tell 50 Republican senators don’t enter the chamber ever, and then he doesn’t even have a quorum. So if he doesn’t have a quorum, he can’t conduct business unless he decides to redefine a quorum.
Green: These guys are doing everything they can to rewrite rules and the laws and they totally disregard the Constitution. HR1 is unconstitutional. So I don’t think they care about that.
Leahy: I don’t think they care at all about that. That makes your job very frustrating. And then when you’re dealing with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez misunderstanding words.
Carmichael: She doesn’t misunderstand it. This is what the Democrats do.
Leahy: Tell us more about how that border story blew up and the pushback against you on that Congressman Green.
Green: She was suggesting that everybody who notes the increase in the border, the surge that we’re racist. And that seems to be the mantra these days from the left. Anyone who points out, in fact, is a racist. They’re pouring across the Southern border. I’m standing there looking at 600 plus young girls in a small pod built for 33 and pointing out what’s going on because Joe Biden made ridiculous both foreign policy decisions and defense of our country, homeland security decisions that have resulted in this. This doesn’t make you a racist.
And them continually playing that racist card negates or lessens the chance that when real racism happens, we’re going to be able to spot it. And we don’t want to numb people to this word. That’s a very powerful and tragic thing when racism happens, and you should never abuse a term just for a political win. And that’s exactly what the left is doing these days. So if you’re a conservative, you’re racist and that’s inflammatory, frustrating, ridiculous. All the adjectives and you can come up with, but that’s the world we live in right now in politics.
Leahy: How can a legislative body function properly if every time the Republican Party says anything, the leadership of the Democratic Party, the mainstream media, and the Big Tech all say, well, that’s racist. How can you have any serious dialogue about important issues?
Green: Thanks for bringing up the big companies. I guess I’m going to go up to the Delta counter now and say sorry, I don’t have a photo ID. I thought I could fly on your airline without a photo ID. Delta Airlines is pushing back against the Georgia law.
Leahy: A great law, by the way, a common-sense law. Voter ID to get an absentee ballot.
Green: It’s common sense. But that word is exclusive these days from certain Democrat leaders. Basically, we get up there and we message and we fight to take back the House.
Leahy: Well, I think you’re right. What are the prospects for taking back the House? We have 30 seconds left here Congressman Green.
Green: We have a tremendous opportunity here. We just need folks to help out, but we can take back the House. We are basically six seats away right now. We’ve got a special that’s coming up. We’ll win one of those, at least, maybe two. Then we’re going to need four seats. We can do that in just 19 months with everybody’s help.
Leahy: And that’s the key point. Everybody’s help.
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
Live from Music Row Friday morning on The Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy – broadcast on Nashville’s Talk Radio 98.3 and 1510 WLAC weekdays from 5:00 a.m. to 8:00 a.m. – host Leahy welcomed U.S. Rep. Mark Green (R-TN-07) to the newsmakers line.
During the second hour, Congressman Green weighed in on last night’s vote to expel freshman Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Green from her committee duties while acknowledging the hypocrisy of the Democrats. He later discussed that he would be prioritizing legislation to win the House back, ensuring election integrity, and taking care of our veterans.
Leahy: Joining us now on the newsmakers line from the land of double standards in Washington D.C. our good friend Congressman Mark Green. Good morning, Congressman Green.
Green: Hey, good morning to you guys. Can you hear me okay?
Leahy: We can hear you. It’s a little crackly. But of course, why wouldn’t you expect it to be a crackly communication with you living in this very weird world of the 117th session of Congress. What happened last night with the land of double standards and the expelling of first-term Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene from her committees in Congress? What happened there?
Green: Well, it’s pretty crazy. The hypocrisy from the left is I mean every day, I think it can’t get any worse, and then, of course, it does. She had made some comments in reference to the website QAnon, and this is all well before she was elected. She got up and talked a little bit about that of course on the floor and explained herself. Nothing compared to the riots that were incited by Pressley and others last summer. But here we are and we voted and it was barely passed because the Democrats barely have a majority in the House now. It’s just hypocrisy to the max now and it makes you sick to your stomach.
Leahy: Can you contrast this to I don’t know what you’d call the French Revolution-Kangaroo court session of the 117th session of Congress with the previous sessions in which you were a member of Congress?
Green: Well, I mean they have always been more than willing to bend the rules to fit their agenda. So even last Congress 116th when I was here my first term they’d bend the rules anytime and they would take stuff straight to the floor. Never going to committee. Bypassing rules. And they’re just doing more of that yesterday which was an excellent example totally against House procedure and took it straight to the floor of the House and was voted on just because they have a majority and can.
Leahy: What is on your personal agenda in this very weird situation where the left is exercising what Alexis de Tocqueville warned us about back in the 1830s? If you want to talk tyranny of the majority just take a look at what’s going on in the House of Representatives today. What’s your plan for the next couple of years?
Green: We could talk about legislative priorities. We could talk about overall priorities. Overall priorities being that we’ve got to retake control of the House because the House is a majority body basically meaning if you’ve got the majority plus one you rule. And you determine what goes to the committees and basically everything that gets done. So this is our number one priority.
And I think this is America’s number one priority and it should coalesce all of us together who love our country and that’s for the Republicans to retake control of the house. There is no other thing that comes close to that a part of that is election integrity. And that means two things. One, of course, doing everything we can with state legislatures across the country, and Republicans control 30 state legislators on both sides.
We’ve got to make sure that mail-in ballots and election integrity happens and that mail-in ballots never happen again and election integrity is reinforced. So those were probably the number one and number two. If you’re talking about legislative priorities, that gets more into the weeds, of course. But taking care of veterans. I’ve got some bills to do that. We have some specific needs at Fort Campbell in the Clarksville area.
That military base there needs new barracks. China. We have got to push back. China is the number one threat to our generation and I’ve got five bills to address that. I’m on the House Armed Services now and Foreign Affairs. I’m going to be the ranking member of one of the subcommittees there for our Western Hemisphere. So I’ll be meeting in National Security this Congress.
Leahy: Our listeners are hearing a little crackling on the line here and I want to explain what that crackling is. The crackling on the line is because Representative Mark Green is now in the land of double standards. That’s what the crackling is coming from. It’s that double standard that is emanating from the Democratic majority and Nancy Pelosi.
Let me shift the questioning here a little bit and I don’t want to catch you off guard but let me talk about some of President Joe Biden’s executive orders. Breitbart is reporting that yesterday he issued an executive order for this fiscal year to increase the number of refugees from the limit of 12,000 under President Trump to 125,000. Tell me what you think about this Congressman Green.
As I look at that executive order I believe that executive order is illegal. And here’s why. The Refugee Act of 1980 authorized the president to set a refugee limit once a year with a letter to Congress in September for the following fiscal year. The president at the time, President Trump issued such a letter and said the limit would be 12,000 for the fiscal year 2021.
As I read the law, there’s only one time in any year that the president can issue that letter and that’s in September in the last year of the fiscal year. President Biden’s executive order totally changes that law. Do I have that right? Would you agree with me or would you look into the idea that that executive order issued yesterday apparently by President Biden increasing refugee limits to 125,000 is in fact illegal? Have you had a chance to look at that?
Green: My team is already looking at it. I’m not an attorney so I have to rely on our staff for that. But they’re digging into that. I think it’s probably wrong on multiple levels and may be unconstitutional on more than one level. Unfunded mandates are I think unconstitutional when the federal government demands that the states do something. They can’t do that. It is fundamentally wrong to do that and not fund it.
When we take refugees into the state of Tennessee the education system and other services get taxed. And that’s why a lot of people push back on this. I actually thought that we should have locked the program in Tennessee. I’ve talked with the governor about that and he chose not to do that. But my thinking is we have a lot of people in Tennessee who have needs and we should take care of them first and then others second. I think the unfunded mandate piece of this is also a reason to say that it’s not constitutional.
Leahy: And I believe Congressman Green that you were in the state Senate in 2015, I think it was 2015 when the Tennessee General Assembly passed a resolution to sue the federal government on Tenth Amendment grounds about the refugee resettlement program. Governor Haslam didn’t sign on to that. That lawsuit was ultimately dismissed for lack of standing. Do I have that right? You were actually involved in that in the state?
Green: Yes I was. (Inaudible talk)
Leahy: Representative Green, the static from the Nancy Pelosi land of double of standards seems to be increasing.
Green: Sorry.
Leahy: It’s not you. I’m sure it’s the land of double standards. (Green chuckles) I want to tell you that I am saving something for you. In our studio today we have a big beautiful birthday cake for the Tennessee Star made by the Puffy Muffin in Brentwood. So I have a beautiful red velvet cake. It’s our fourth year anniversary of the online news site The Tennessee Star. We’re going to cut this cake. I’m going to save a piece for you. And then next time you’re in studio I’ll give you a piece of this cake and we will preserve it so it’s tasty.
Green: Sounds great. I love red velvet cake, and I’m excited about the accomplishments of The Tennessee Star.
Leahy: Oh well, thanks so much Congressman Mark Green, we really appreciate you joining us this morning. I know you have lots of busy things to do and look forward to having you here in studio again. Thanks for joining us.
Green: Sounds great. Thanks for having me on sorry about the static.
Leahy: Oh, that’s okay. We’re going to blame Nancy Pelosi and all the tyranny of the majority Democrats. Thanks so much, Representative Mark Green. Well, that’s a great interview but a little staticky there. But again, it’s the land of double standards. That will explain it all.
Listen to the full second hour here:
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Tune in weekdays from 5:00 – 8:00 a.m. to the Tennessee Star Report with Michael Patrick Leahy on Talk Radio 98.3 FM WLAC 1510. Listen online at iHeart Radio.
